Commissioner describes plane crash near Houston

Published 6:00 pm, Saturday, June 26, 2010

Photo: Johnny Hanson /Hearst News Service

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Photo: Johnny Hanson /Hearst News Service

Commissioner describes plane crash near Houston

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Having flown since he was a teenager with no major problems, County Commissioner Robin Donnelly needed all his experience when his recently inspected 1954 Cessna 180 single engine plane lost power north of Houston in the early afternoon of June 3.

A recreational glider pilot in England in the late 1970s, he started using every available technique to land the plane without hitting anyone.

"I was on an instrument approach to Runway 26 Right at George Bush Intercontinental Airport, below cloud coverage, when all of a sudden it just stopped flying," Donnelly said. "You're dumbstruck because the engine is running but isn't putting out any thrust.

"I'm still cruising at 140 mph when it goes into idle seven miles out. It didn't look like I could make the airport, so I started looking around for a place to get down. There were some undeveloped streets in Humble and I aimed for them and almost made it. I was a block short."

Donnelly took part of the roof off Glen Sykes' home, clipped a tree in the backyard with his right wing and came to rest with the left wing in a tree. Having suffered a broken nose and a fractured right eye socket and cheekbone, he was hospitalized for two days and had plastic surgery.

"They put two plates in my face, titanium gauze where my cheekbone should be and a stent in my nose, which was whopperjawed off my face," said Donnelly, 61. "They took out the bones where part of the cheekbone broke off into my sinuses."

National Transportation Safety Board inspectors found that a clamp on the plane's throttle cable had come loose. "We had problems with it a year ago," Donnelly said, explaining that he bought the plane three years ago as a backup to the twin engine Beechcraft Baron owned by his company, Eastland Oil.

The oilfield landman was going to Houston to have a pipe tested at a metallurgy laboratory and was in the Cessna because the Baron had a fuel leak.

He said there wasn't much danger of a fire because it would have taken a more violent crash to rupture the rubber fuel bladders in his wings, which held another 90 minutes of fuel when the plane went down about 2 p.m. and brought police, an airport fire truck and an ambulance.

Donnelly's late father George was a World War II flight instructor and B-29 engineering officer about to fly a mission over Japan when the war ended in August 1945. Donnelly's brother Art, of Houston, and sister Jan O'Neill, of Midland, are pilots.

He and his wife Jeannine have two children, Garrett, of Midland, and Kiersten Kita, of Dallas, and a granddaughter. His mom Jean lives here.

Donnelly's wife was dubious about his flying to Houston to have stitches removed last week, so he hired James Kettle to accompany him in case he was too heavily medicated to fly the Baron back.

"Once you get pitched off that horse, you want to get back on and keep riding," said Kettle, a pilot since 1986. "I hadn't heard about the accident, but when we had been in the air for 20 minutes he started explaining what happened. He was just fine coming back. Mechanical things can break. The difference is that you don't just pull over to the side of the road and coast to a stop.

"It's part of our career," Kettle said. "If you walk away, it just wasn't your time."

Midland Odessa Transportation Alliance President James Beauchamp has often flown with Donnelly, a former MOTRAN chairman. "Of all the pilots I have met and known, Robin is the best and most conscientious," Beauchamp said.

"If it hadn't been for his skill level, that certainly could have been a lot worse. It's extraordinary for someone in that situation who realizes that uh, oh, this isn't working and is calm and experienced enough to get somewhere they won't harm anyone."

When asked if he expected to survive, Donnelly said, "You don't think about that.

"You think about flying the airplane. You can't panic. You've got to do your best to get it down in a good condition. The co-pilot's door was open, so I popped the seat belt and walked out. The homeowner came out. If you heard a loud boom in your house, you'd probably come out, too."